Neo-confederates want out of US

Sunday 17 September 2000 21.21 EDT
First published on Sunday 17 September 2000 21.21 EDT

Tens of thousands of white southerners are reported to be joining organisations that seek independence from the rest of the US, claiming that the federal government no longer represents "southern values". Opponents say these neo-confederate groups are allowing militant and racist whites to organise politically under the guise of a heritage movement.

Last week the Southern party, which advocates secession, won its first mayoral victory, in a village in Alabama.

The party is an offshoot of a group called the League of the South, which says there has been a surge in its membership as white southerners become disillusioned with the "multiculturalism" of the main parties. The league is led by academics and cites as its inspiration such separatist movements as the Northern League in Italy.

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which has just completed a report on the growth of the southern movement, said it was "providing a veneer of moral legitimacy for people who would be embarrassed to join the [white supremacist Ku Klux] Klan".

The growth of the movement became apparent earlier this year when South Carolina bowed to national pressure and transferred the battle flag of the Confederacy from the dome of its statehouse to a nearby monument. Many see the flag as the symbol of a civil war fought to preserve slavery.

"[The new-confederates] were bitterly angry about that," Mr Potok said. "That was a big loss." But flag issue gave them the chance to recruit whites who felt increasingly estranged from mainstream politics.

The League of the South is led by a former history professor, Michael Hill, whose office is in Tuscoloosa, Alabama. Formed in 1994, it has about 9,000 members.

It and other neo-confederate groups point to the break-up of the Soviet Union, the separatist Québécois movement in Canada, and the Northern League in Italy as examples of what is possible.

As the League of the South is not a political party, some of its members formed the Southern party, which now has 2,000 members. Last week Wayne Willingham, 37, became its first successful candidate in a mayoral election, in the village of West Point, Alabama, where he beat the incumbent by a single vote. Mr Willingham described himself as "just an old country boy who's tired of things being done the way they are".

The other main body in the southern movement is the Council of Conservative Citizens, which has about 15,000 members. It recently deplored on its website a music festival in Charleston, South Carolina, as a "multicultural mudbath [which] attracts mostly queers and weirdos".

The Southern Poverty Law Centre's report, Rebels with a Cause, lists 14 different groups which it says operate in 25 states, mainly in the south, to promote the confederate cause. They include the Heritage Preservation Association which has declared "total war" on those who attack southern values and culture, and the Confederate States of America, a group which would like to repeal laws that gave citizenship to blacks and votes to women.

The main theoretical journal of the movement is called American Renaissance. It is edited by a white separatist, Jared Taylor, a board member of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The magazine promotes such notions as blacks having smaller brains and the dangers of non-white immigration.

The Edgefield Journal, "the only true southern nationalist newspaper", is the other main publication; a recent piece suggested that "many slaves were willing to be slaves".

The groups are represented in court by Kirk Lyons, a lawyer who shows his affection for the "Anglo-Celtic" roots of the movement by dressing up periodically in a top hat and kilt. He has described Hitler as "probably the most misunderstood man in German history" and is now the chief lawyer acting on behalf of the Southern Legal Resource Centre, which is the movement's legal arm.

Mr Potok says he accepts that not all who have joined the heritage movement are racists. "But a scene once dominated by civil war re-enactors and those who maintain Confederate monuments is turning increasingly ugly."

Michael Hill is dismissive of Mr Potok's centre and its report, seeing the centre as a "snooping organisation for the federal government" out to "feather its own nest".

The league was mainly interested in preserving the "symbols, language, cuisine and music" of the south.

"We are seeking to preserve a distinct regional culture," Mr Hill told the Guardian, "and we believe in political independence". While he agreed that independence might be unrealistic now, he said that "in five, 10, 50 or 100 years" it could happen.

Mainstream politics did not address the League's concerns. "The Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin. There's not a dime's worth of difference between them."

"The US government ... interferes in virtually every aspect of everyday life. Rather than "sitting around wringing our hands", he said, they were getting organised.